Writing life: Blockbusters
Hollywood script doctor Jeff Lyons doesn’t even believe in writer’s block, but he’s still going to help you beat it
As writers, we all have come to accept certain maxims to be true, or at least we have grown so familiar with the consensus memes of the creative writing world that we have become unwitting suckers, blindly accepting them, without exercising personal discernment and healthy skepticism as artists.
The memes I’m speaking of have become normalised and homogenised, so much so that we accept them as if they are true, have always been true, will forever be true:
• Good stories write themselves
• Characters write themselves
• It’s enough to be talented
• Writing conferences will make you a better writer
• Good stories always rise to the top and the list goes on...
But, the biggest meme of all, the one that almost all writers swallow hook, line, and sinker is that of writer’s block. There isn’t a writer I know who hasn’t drunk this Kool-Aid.
‘But wait,’ you say incredulously, ‘I’ve experienced it! Writer’s block is real; it exists; it is the devil’s work.’
Well, yes, writers can get blocked, but that blockage is so easily handled and so uncomplicated that, once they understand it, many writers will be shocked by the simplicity of what is really going on. To appreciate this, allow me to first explain the consensus viewpoint on writer’s block.
The man we have to thank for the pernicious idea that we writers have a special neurosis all our own is a long-dead psychoanalyst named Edmund Bergler. He first coined the phrase ‘writer’s block’ back in 1947, as only one example of what he called ‘unconscious masochism’. The psychoanalytic analysis of writer’s block is impenetrable in its own right, but that the term’s origins came from the world of psychoanalysis – the Holy Grail for the neurosis model of emotional unwellness – should be our first red light as to its illegitimacy.